angelbirdflies

The first time I met the Dalai Lama at 23, I had anticipated looking into his eyes and seeing how beautiful he was.  But when I looked in his eyes for the first time, and each subsequent time, I was utterly overwhelmed by how beautiful I AM.  It literally knocked all the human babbling straight out of my mind and cracked my heart wide open.  He offered a clear mirror with my own beauty reflected.  I have met with many clear seeing eyes who do this.  Children often do it. Nature does this.  And occasionally we have loved ones who do it as well.  I just spent an amazing week with my beautiful sister, beauty reflecting back and forth, exploding with joy, wonder and heart cracking splendor. This is the gift that we can bring to every moment.  The gift of clear seeing.  At core we are all infinitely beautiful.  When this is seen we discover ourselves already in Eden, inraptured through and through, by a radiance in which everything is ...

 So much beauty, there are no words.

When walking alone in nature for long periods of time something wonderful happens.   The mind, generally so full of it's own diatribe, begins to   s  l  o  w   down and the senses atune to the rhythm of life all around.   In the trees overhead, an avian fillabuster worthy of parliamant is in full force.  The wind whispers of her ongoing love affair with tree and cloud.  The bees buzz, matchmakers for flowers, busily dancing from bloom to bloom. Squirrels scurry amidst branches, hurriedly racing from perch to perch.   As the mind settles it's inward churning, a subtle shift takes place.  The listener, as a distinct other, no longer exists.  There is no "me" and nature, there is just T H I S... this grand arising, exactly as it is. The "me" is simply another note played through the unique instrument of self. A note in the vast and  indescribably beautiful symphony of life.  

Since everything is but an apparition Perfect in being what it is Having nothing to do With good or bad Acceptance or rejection, One may well burst Out In laughter. 14 cent. Tibet Long Chen Pa

"That which I am seeking  I already am." Imagine you are standing in the sunlight with eyes squeezed shut looking for the light. Open your eyes.

When you find the "Doer" call me. But I don't expect to hear from you. "Madness!" you say, "Of course there is a me." But have you ever gone looking, for the paradox in plain view? It's too immediate to notice, too simple to believe. There is no where to go and no one to get there. This. Is. It.

A t   Some point Your relationship With God Will Become like this: Next time you meet Him in the forest Or on a crowded city street There won't be anymore "Leaving." That is, God will climb into Your pocket. You will simply just take Yourself Along! --Hafiz

Resist your temptation to lie By speaking of separation from God, Otherwise, We might have to medicate You. In the ocean A lot goes on beneath your eyes. Listen, They have clinics there too For the insane Who persist in saying things like: "I am independent from the Sea, God is not always around Gently  Pressing against My body." --Hafiz

Newness. Spring is afresh with new life.  Flowers, buds, sprouts... the world all around is painted in brilliant hues and I am basking in the view.

Life is paradoxical. Something in the mind wants to control it, to understand, predict, plan and otherwise navigate life with gusto. In it's effort to stay safe, the mind plans and worries, frets and paces, thinks and judges, moralizes and intellectualizes, but Life is... life. There is pain and pleasure, unbelievable beauty and unimaginable ugliness, sickness and health, fullness and scarcity. It's not an oscillating pendulum, forever swinging between dual points of interest, it's paradoxically all of it at once. We spend years trying to make life safe.  The beautiful irony is that it's not safe and it's not unsafe.  It just is as it is. Our willingness to be with, and as, that paradoxical truth IS what all the great teachings were pointing to all along.

I have noticed something about life... everything changes. We arbitrarily decide which weather we are meant to have...sunny, playful, loving, stress-free, affirming, fill in the blank... and then we worry about the forecast.  We plan and prepare, we fret and watch for news, for signs, for disaster. Listen. It's gonna rain. It's gonna storm. There may be hurricanes and floods, blizzards and tornados.  It's life.  There will be ups and downs.  The kids will drive us nuts and they will surprise us with their brilliance.  People will amaze us and disappoint the holy shit out of us.  Our health will be smooth and it will be rough.  We will laugh our asses off and we will crumble to the floor crying.  There will be birth and there will be death. It's all here. We wait for summer to set in and for the clouds of life to disperse forever.  Some of us call it enlightenment, others success.  Some call it the right relationship, other...

Longing. Have you ever noticed that much of our life seems to be spent reaching toward the next moment in a misplaced attempt to escape or appease a persistent feeling of longing? Instead of sitting tight with the longing itself, we look for an explanation. "I'm not satisfied in this relationship." "I need to find my life's purpose".  "Do I even have a purpose?"  "Maybe if I can just clean up the shit pile from my childhood or get my ass back in therapy." "If I had more money I'd feel safe."  "If I was truly loved I'd know contentment." "If I were enlightened all of this aching and suffering would be replaced with the 'peace that passeth understanding'."  Longing scares the holy shit out of us.  We run like hell away from NOW.  Where are we going?  Toward the next promised something, in hope of release?  News flash...it's another NOW.  It's just longing in a new...

When the topic of meditation arises, I often hear, "I don't meditate", "I've never meditated", " I can't meditate"or "I AM a meditator" which often means, "I sit for x number of minutes every day which makes me subtly superior".  Once upon a time I  meditated  several hours a day, year after year, quietly sequestered from the hustle and bustle of the world.  Then something changed.  I asked what am I training for? Meditation, as it's commonly referred to, is a practice  composed of mental exercises and some degree of physical control, for the purpose of reaching a heightened state of awareness or a more relaxed condition.  It's easy to make meditation into a destination... an aspiration to attain some conceptual ideal or the means to get there.  W here?  I don't know… there ?  Enlightenment? …some preferred future HERE? But meditation is a training tool and not a merit-based-goal earned through time spent si...

What is the difference between your experience of Existence and that of a saint? The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God and that the Beloved has just made such a Fantastic Move that the saint is now continually tripping over Joy And bursting out in Laughter and saying, “I Surrender!” Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think You have a thousand serious moves.”       ―  Hāfiz

The whole spiritual search has lost its luster. After a while the enlightenment carrot starts to look like…well… a carrot, no different than any other carrot, the pursuit of another ideal in one form or another. Oneness chasing oneness is another case of conceptual bullshit.  Utter and complete. Every attempt to experience oneness/enlightenment/liberation is a movement away from it and toward a conceptual world of twoness...the illusion of illusion.  It just doesn’t matter. Our western conditioned minds, raised on autonomy, the pursuit of happiness and platonic thought, divide body and soul into oppositional constructs, only to provide some arbitrary point of reference. Today, while at work, I had a seizure.   This one was accompanied by hours of disorientation, loss of words, heart fluctuations, dizziness and the typical emotional aftermath.   Hours later, as I sat with the vulnerable uncertainty of life, I realized I am no longer interested in concepts. ...

We are, each of us, a paradox, a seemingly senseless combination of contradictions that, when considered in full, prove to be the truest expression of self.  We each try to negotiate our interactions in an effort to cloak our inconsistencies from ourselves and those we love.  How can we be both joyous and sad?  How can we experience deep love and union alongside contraction and separation?  How can we be patient and irritable, tolerant and judgmental, kind and cold?   We crave closeness, belonging and connection but are afraid to be known fully. My godmother and one of the great loves of my life, recently … I don't even know how to write it…died? (Death is a word meant to point to a mystery beyond anything the mind could comprehend and yet the mind doesn't like inconsistencies.)  She lived a long life as a remarkable being.  In the days and weeks following her death, people remembered her and in their memories she became less and less human and mo...

What is life?  The mind is eager to regurgitate its many "known" and cocky answers to that question.  But they don't hold much water, they leak all over the place and we spend a lot of energy trying to patch them up.  The honest response is, "I don't know". There is an experience and something being experienced. There is a sense of an experiencer. Wisdom rests far less on what is known and far more on the unknown. Okay, great, nice thought or unsettling thought, but we aren't interested in another philosophy to organize our life around.  That's more of the same.  How on gods green earth do we live in uncertainty?  And not living with uncertainty like living with a rarely seen, and thoroughly disliked house guest who eats all the food in the fridge and pisses on the toilet seat, but like… holy shit the house is gone and the ground is gone and what the holy hell is going on around here…again and again. It's a bit terrifying really.  But...

What is death? I don't know. It is not what we tend to think it is.  Of that I am certain. On December 29th, 2015 my beloved god-mother/teacher/sister/friend/kindred spirit/aunt/soul-mate left her body.  Her spirit, always so strong, luminous and buoyant, had simply outgrown the body, like a caterpillar does its cocoon.  I celebrate her transition and my heart selfishly grieves.  I have often noticed when lovers part, that it is the one left who grieves the hardest, surrounded as they are by the reminders of a life created and shared together.   Remembering…. …Looking through the eyes of my two year old self at a white haired woman so filled with magic and laughter that all the world's petty concerns bow before her.  She talks of fairies and angels and elves when all the adults around me talk of war and money and concern.  Her world and my world…same, same. …A boom of thunder forces me into bed beside her where we listen to rain and s...

The first day of the new year has a peculiar effect on me. While people busy themselves with resolutions born from holiday excess, I ruminate on the nature of time.  I know we all live by it and yet complicit agreement doesn't make it so. Time is a human contrivance and convenience and although it may be necessary for practical purposes, our reliance on it obscures a genuine engagement with the uncertainty and robust vulnerability inherent in this moment, and this one, and this one, ad infinitum. Sitting on a chair worn from the weight of countless asses and working at a porcelain table whose dings and dents describe meals and gatherings, I inhale the sweet scent of white lilies, a gesture of love from my treasured mate and peer through glass at a snow covered yard hiding countless spring flowers yet to emerge. I breathe, I live, I am.  And the grand joke is that all off it…the grand sum total of life… offers up a singular invitation, in infinite forms, that you can only ...

From the bank of a river I watched my partner fly fishing with the fluid movements and rhythmic motions of a longtime fisherman.  I realized then, that he was meditating with eyes open, fully present and aware.  Amidst the cadence of water flowing over well worn stones and the soft whir of a rod in motion, I understood fly fishing as an ideal metaphor for conscious creation.  In fly fishing, the weight of the line carries the fly to the fish. In manifestation, the weight of our focus carries our intention to the field of infinite possibility.  In fly fishing, the fly rod and line (and thus the fly) go in the direction that the rod tip is pointed during the cast.  Similarly when we create, it’s the clarity of our focus that determines the aim of our intention.  Attention is flexible, giving us the ability to focus the mind or soften and widen it. When we center our attention on what we want and feel it in real time, NOW , we are building the ener...